An Englishman’s home is…….Empty?
On a no news day for Secured Loans, a nationally circulated story has just caught my eye. It caught my attention for two reasons, firstly because it talks about empty houses and our business obviously has a vested interest in property ownership and secondly, because it highlights two places near to where I live as the worst cases.
Halifax research shows a total of 290,862 private homes in England have been left empty for more than six months - equivalent to 1.6% of all privately owned dwellings in England. Although they also add that the number of private empty homes has fallen by 6% in England over the past three years.
The most private empty homes are in Burnley (6.2%), Liverpool (5.6%) and Pendle (5.1%).
Now, I live in Pendle and the neighbouring Borough is Burnley - so that’s two places I know a little bit about and I wonder whether the empty houses are because of them being ‘low demand’, being marked for demolition or maybe it’s because of some sort of fall-out from the, do we - don’t we demolish them or renovate them debacle of a few years ago.
In contrast to the Halifax figure the Empty Homes Campaign estimates
the figure to be nearer to 700,000 and according to the Government’s figures we will need another 4 million new homes within the next 10 years. My quick trawl around the Internet also reveals that 200 Councils have an Empty Property Office.
With regards to houses standing empty for a long time, perhaps we should take a leaf out of our American cousin’s book and paint them orange to draw more attention to them.
